Monday, April 22, 2013

84. Rose and Valerie } screaming from the gallery.

Maxwell Edison is a serial killer, his trademark a
silver hammer-blow to the head. He convinces Joan, a student of “pataphysical
science” to go with him to see a film, but when she answers his knock at the
door, he murders her. “Bang bang!” he shouts. Before he murders his teacher,
who keeps him after school for acting up in class, he writes, over and over, “I
must not be so.” What he must not be is a blank—what is he? He is thorough. He “made
sure that she was dead.”

On trial, Maxwell hardly pays attention, but
parodies the courtroom sketch artist by sketching testimonials. Two women,
known only as Rose and Valerie, must be removed from the court for shouting, “Max
must go free!” As Maxwell is sentenced, he hears the judge bowdlerize the
phrase Maxwell wrote on the classroom chalkboard—the judge, “tells them so”—, and Maxwell fantasizes killing the judge with his
silver hammer, the head of it shattering the judge’s glass face “as the words
are leaving his lips”—“Bang bang.”